Majority of hospitals slow to adopt routine apology policy

Despite "I'm sorry" laws, most still worry about the impact on lawsuits.

By Kevin B. O'Reilly, AMNews staff. June 25, 2007.

With 30 states now boasting laws that make apologies after adverse events inadmissible in court, more hospitals are examining whether to add apology to their protocols.

More than 100 physicians and hospital officials gathered for a two-day Joint Commission seminar last month exploring the benefits, and challenges, of saying, "We're sorry."

The march toward routine apology and disclosure when things go wrong has been slow.

Steve Kraman, MD, the former chief of staff at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Lexington, Ky., who spearheaded a policy there, said the issue of whether saying sorry can reduce costs is being overanalyzed.

"It's the right thing to do," Dr. Kraman said. "That's it."

More hospitals are experimenting with the apology-and-disclosure concept but "have not openly adopted it," he said. "Many hospitals still see this as the bleeding edge of the movement."

The Lexington VA decided in 1987 that it would investigate adverse events, disclose the results to patients, and apologize and offer compensation when harmful errors were committed. After positive results, the VA system adopted the Lexington policy.

In 2002, the University of Michigan Health System adopted a similar policy and says it is saving $2 million a year in medical liability costs. The Stanford University Medical Center, Harvard's 16 teaching hospitals, the 42-hospital Catholic Healthcare West system, Kaiser Permanente's 30 medical centers and Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota also have adopted apology-and-disclosure policies.